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.\"     @(#)aliases.5	6.5 (Berkeley) 5/10/91
.\"
.Dd Mar 31, 2004
.Dt ALIASES 5
.Os MASTODON
.Sh NAME
.Nm aliases
.Nd aliases file for
.Sy postoffice
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Sh DESCRIPTION
This file describes user
.Tn ID
aliases used by
.Pa @sbindir@/postoffice .
The file resides in
.Pa @confdir@
and
is formatted as a series of lines of the form
.Bd -filled -offset indent
name: name_1, name2, name_3, . . .
.Ed
.Pp
The
.Em name
is the name to alias, and the
.Em name_n
are the aliases for that name.
Lines beginning with white space are continuation lines.
Lines beginning with
.Ql #
are comments.
.Pp
Aliasing occurs only on local names.
Loops can not occur, since no message will be sent to any person more than once.
.Pp
After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who have a
.Dq Pa .forward
file in their home directory have messages forwarded to the
list of users defined in that file.
.Pp
This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing information is
placed into a binary format in the file
.Pa /etc/aliases.db
using the program
.Xr newaliases 1 .
A
.Xr newaliases
command
.Em MUST
be executed each time the aliases file is changed for the
change to take effect.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr newaliases 1 ,
.Xr dbm 3 ,
.Xr postoffice 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
file format appeared in
.Bx 4.0 .
